If a woman has a habit of gravitating towards abusive men, and gets into a relationship with an abusive man who then abuses her, knowing full well that he has an extensive history of abusing women, which of the following is/are potentially true (they are in random order):

a) She needs to take some responsibility for her own choices - why would she think he would treat her any differently? She is responsible for putting herself in a situation where she could get abused.

b) She is a victim, since he is the abuser, and the only person who is responsible for this is the abuser who is abusing the victim.

c) How can he be responsible for abusing if he's not aware that what he is doing is abuse?

d) Both people are equally responsible for the abusive relationship because it takes two.

e) How can she be responsible for putting herself in a bad situation, if this is "normal" for her? she may not even recognize that abuse is abnormal, due to her repeating pattern.

f) Other

(If "other", please list your other, and if I'm on the ball, I will edit this entry and add the "other" options.)

Indeed, it's the black and white attitude of some that cause me to step away from stating my opinion before anyone can attack me for it. I'm happy to discuss with someone one-on-one, but I've learned better than to post where anyone can read.

I've got to be honest - each one of those individual thoughts went through my mind, separately, even before I read the comments... although I phrased the options above to mirror the comments more than my own thoughts.

I'll wait a bit longer, but then maybe I should post the emails that my cousin sent to Air Canada and to Singapore Airlines, in regards to his adventures in escaping Japan.

I've only just seen it and I'm not going to respond for exactly the same reasons as comedychick. I'm quite happy to IM you (and I don't say that to many people).

Having seen the discussion that prompted this, there's no way I'm even hinting at my opinion. Except to give this hint: I've found that I keep repeating mistakes until I change what I'm doing. That's me. Changing patterns of behaviour. All by myself.

I think it's a tough call. I think that we're all responsible for our actions to the extent that we're in control of them. That means that in the given situation, there's quite a spectrum of responsibility, dependent on all sorts of variables I'm not privy to.

See this is what I get for being occupied with an impending nuclear disaster, I miss ALL the good stuff. It's like being locked in a Faraday cage.

I think it's F. He's committing the abuse, but she's going back for it repeatedly. At some point, you have to realize that the common factor in all of your past disastrous relationships is YOU and figure out how to change it. That's not saying it's easy, but just that it can be done.

Idol is so full of "poor me, I've been abused but look how amazingly strong yet interestingly cracked I am" entries that I can't even guess who this drama is about, especially since I stop reading those after paragraph one after about week 4.

Heh, this bit of drama actually came from booj not idol... hex posted a question and the responses went viral.

I took a slightly different take on a similar issue :P

I should send you a copy of the emails my cousin sent to both Air Canada and Singapore Airlines regarding his departure from Japan - it might add some smiles to an otherwise nuclear disaster impending day :P

I can say this. Psychiatry teaches one thing, but life experience teaches another in regards to this situation. My father abused my mother for 13 years before she finally got away from him. Being a good 4 years older than my brother, he doesn't recall seeing the abuse, however, when we were older (myself around 15) my father turned his abusiveness towards us.

He nearly killed my mother, beating her with the butt of a pistol and threatening to kill her and then himself. That was when she finally left. He was always an alcoholic. He drank from sun-up to sun-down, and frankly I am shocked he didn't die from driving drunk all the time. He is dead and gone, but alcohol had nothing to do with it.

I saw my mother on numerous occasions laying on the couch with the lights off or very low so that my brother and I couldn't see her. I remember seeing her beaten so badly her eyes wouldn't open. As a child I had no clue what was really happening, but as a teenager and later an adult it was clear what I had witnessed all those years. When my father started to get abusive with me, mostly me and not my brother as I often drew his wrath away from my brother because I felt I was stronger than he was, I began to understand why she didn't get away sooner and stayed there with him.

The first time abuse happens from someone you love and who you believe loves you, your emotions convince you that it was something you had done. You don't want to admit that they aren't who you believed they were. As it continues on, the emotions turn to fear. This person really isn't who you thought they were, and that convinces you that they are capable of killing you or hurting you worse than they already have.

Most will eventually find a way out, and they are so afraid of a repeat of that abuse they find themselves too skiddish to really get involved with someone new for a very long time. Some, however, end up right back in the fire. Often it's because they want to believe that not everyone is like that, but sometimes it's because they think that the love of someone new will take the pain they have inside away.

Someone who has a tendency to get into abusive relationships repeatedly typically has more going on behind their patterns. Many were abused as children, or saw the abuse and find a sort of deranged comfort in it. It's what they know and they feel out of place when they don't have that abuse in their lives. Children want to believe their parents love each other, and if Daddy hits Mommy that must be what love is.

If a person has been abused once, they know the signs. They should be able to tell if a person is the abusive type early on and get away before it's harder to do so. The person doing the abuse is to blame for their actions. Even those who aren't raised with strong ideals of right and wrong know better. There is no legitimate (non-medical) excuse for them repeatedly abusing someone they claim to care about. Generally they are insecure. They need that power they feel to lift themselves up. What causes the insecurity is too varied to cover here.

The person being abused isn't to blame for being abused, but if it's something that has happened before, they have no excuse for not getting away from it or for going back into it. They have proven that you can be abused and get away. That is the hardest hurdle for someone being abused, believing you CAN get away and be safe and happy again. For a repeated victim, they have something deeper going on inside themselves to allow it to continue on, with anyone new or even by going back to the previous abuser. No one deserves to be abused, and anyone who is abused is a victim.

However, at some point the victim becomes the instigator, simply because they should know better. That doesn't take away the fact they are a victim, but it does change the cirumstances. Many women with these tendencies are afraid of being alone, they would rather be in an abusive relationship than be alone. Some have such low self-worth that they think they deserve nothing better than this. There are some still who crave attention, they crave it so much they take bad attention to fulfill their need. The think if their man is abusing them, then he is paying attention, otherwise, he just doesn't care.

This may not be what you were looking for...it's just one of those subjects I dedicated a lot of time to studying, and as soon as I got my degree I put myself available to help those who are victims of abuse. I couldn't do anything to help my mother 25 years ago, but I can try and do something now.

The comment thread went viral in the community on a slightly different question, but it brought up a lot of the issues I inserted in my post. I am seriously interested in what my friends list thinks since I generally think considerably more of them and their opinions than of... others :P

Oh hai, I know this is forever later, but I am just returning to LJ for a visit and am checking up on you while breaking from a major post I'm making. (Pfew! It's long!)

Anyway, my say is this...

They're both to blame, but they're both not to blame.

By that I mean he's abusive, clearly that's wrong. She's continuously getting into relationships with abusive men, and therefore making excuses for their abuse. That's clearly wrong. (* Note; I do not know if she makes excuses directly, as in saying "He only does this because he loves me," or "It was my fault," but by continuing to get into these relationships and not ending them when they become abusive, she IS making excuses.)

That being said, while they are both clearly doing bad/stupid/shitty things, they both have something wrong with them that is driving that behavior. Normal behavior is to not be abusive, and normal behavior is to avoid those who are abusive towards you. These men clearly have issues dealing with XXX (anger? jealousy? sadness? whatever...) that they need to seek counseling for. But she also has issues (self worth? being attracted to abusive personalities? again, whatever...) that she needs to seek counseling for. I look at it like drug abuse, self mutilation, etc. These things are clearly not good choices, but you can't fault the person for having those issues.

What I think is the important thing for those involved is for them to all realize that this does not make either of them a bad person, but it is something that both of them need to work on. The ultimate goal is that he will be able to learn how to deal with his problems better, and she will solver her underlying issue that leads to her dating those men.